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CyberArk Certificate Manager vs UserLock comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 15, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

CyberArk Certificate Manager
Ranking in Authentication Systems
8th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.0
Number of Reviews
19
Ranking in other categories
Certificate Management Software (2nd)
UserLock
Ranking in Authentication Systems
28th
Average Rating
10.0
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Access Management (29th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of March 2026, in the Authentication Systems category, the mindshare of CyberArk Certificate Manager is 1.9%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of UserLock is 1.1%, up from 1.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Authentication Systems Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
CyberArk Certificate Manager1.9%
UserLock1.1%
Other97.0%
Authentication Systems
 

Featured Reviews

Karthik Kashyap T H - PeerSpot reviewer
Lead Engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Eliminates certificate expiration outages and offers good customization and reporting capabilities
Even though it allows for email editing, until version 23.1, you had to log on to the server, and the console itself used to take a lot of time. That has changed from the last release onwards. When you're defining the flow, there are some areas that can probably cause confusion to the users. If you want to rename the default field, you cannot rename it, which caused a lot of confusion during the initial days until everyone got settled in. Allowing the renaming or updating of the default field is something Certificate Manager can improve on. Certificate Manager has both the on-prem and the cloud versions, but the on-prem version is far more mature than the cloud version, which lacks a lot of features that the on-prem version offers, at least when we did the POC and evaluated the product. The maturity of the cloud version needs improvement. Additionally, when considering the on-prem version, there is a minor glitch in the system. When an administrator makes changes, they have flexibility regarding the approval flow. When dealing with a certificate that requires approval from several different teams, there is a minor glitch in the system where the name of the approver does not appear. This is a bug that we are currently addressing. Additionally, there is room for improvement in key management. Changing the default account name is not a straightforward process; it can be quite tedious. This is an area where improvements could be made. If there is a particular workflow that we want to tweak, right now, we can achieve it only via a PowerShell script. It would be great if they could also support a small Python script or anything to expand their scripting or adaptable workflow code base. Even though we can call another script from a PowerShell script, if someone doesn't have knowledge of PowerShell, that would be challenging.
Bill H. - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Technology at City Of Keizer
Affordable, easy to use, and integrates well with Active Directory
The product and service are already great as it is but if I could add one feature, I guess it would be nice to have another factor of authentication (two additional factors) like your phone and a token for example, for when people forget their phone at home. It’s not that I mind not having two factors, but I do get that question from time to time from some of our users who think it would be really useful. From what I’ve heard, they’re working on it and it should be coming in the next version so that’s great news.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"CyberArk Certificate Manager has impacted our organization positively by making our life much easier by automatically updating and deploying certificates so our sites load correctly and we save a lot of time."
"So, from the perspective of risk reduction, it can be directly quantified in the value for the customer."
"We have reduced 80% to 90% of our outages with Venafi, which impacts the revenue substantially."
"Certificate Manager's ability to help with compliance and regulatory requirements, including SOX and Swift, was great; this is a major selling point."
"CyberArk Certificate Manager has excellent capability in handling certification renewals; whenever you specify any validity period that needs to be renewed within certain days, it triggers automatically, and I appreciate that aspect."
"The feature that I have found most valuable is their certificate discovery."
"Venafi's technical support is impressively fast."
"Venafi takes care of automatically renewing and deploying your certificate so that you don't need to worry when it expires."
"It is affordable, integrates easily with Active Directory, and is simple to install and maintain."
"We mainly implemented UserLock for multi-factor authentication, but the user login insights are also nice."
"UserLock was pretty easy to set up and simple to use, and the documentation covered everything."
"The most valuable features are two-factor authentication and real-time logon monitoring."
 

Cons

"The product was really good when it was a Venafi product. However, since its acquisition by CyberArk, there has been a lack of significant innovations."
"Venafi could enhance its offerings by providing more automation features."
"The product was really good when it was a Venafi product. However, since its acquisition by CyberArk, there has been a lack of significant innovations. They are pushing for cloud adoption, but we prefer on-premises solutions due to regulatory concerns."
"Venafi excels in automating certificate rotation and deployment but could enhance its offering by improving support for hardware security modules like Fortanix and providing more advanced, out-of-the-box integrations with public certificate authorities for DNS re-verification."
"Currently lacks the capability to automatically download certificates in JKS."
"Regarding stability, I observed that in the last year, CyberArk Certificate Manager was down two to three times without any notification."
"I would like to see included in the next release of Venafi integration with the cloud HSM's, Hardware Security Module. Additionally, I would say other cloud services, because it's not only cloud that's essential. If you have a customer that has a lot of their IT moved into cloud, integration with different cloud services is always an area to improve."
"Regarding needed improvements, the UI needs enhancement. Sometimes it experiences latency-wise issues."
"The product and service are already great as it is but if I could add one feature, I guess it would be nice to have another factor of authentication (two additional factors) like your phone and a token for example, for when people forget their phone at home."
"The product and service are already great as it is but if I could add one feature, I guess it would be nice to have another factor of authentication (two additional factors) like your phone and a token for example, for when people forget their phone at home."
"I would like to see UserLock add the ability to automatically create a group policy in Active Directory."
"I would like to see UserLock add the ability to automatically create a group policy in Active Directory. That might streamline the setup process."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing model is complex, considering factors beyond the number of certificates. This complexity can make our payments to Venafi challenging if costs continue to rise. It is good but more expensive than the competitors."
"Venafi's pricing appears to be competitive within the market."
"You will be hard-pressed to find better pricing."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
16%
Computer Software Company
9%
Insurance Company
7%
Government
7%
Construction Company
13%
Government
11%
University
8%
Comms Service Provider
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business8
Large Enterprise17
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Venafi?
In terms of pricing, they are a little costly, but they are the best in the market today, so I would say they are worth every penny, rating them again at seven or eight.
What needs improvement with Venafi?
CyberArk Certificate Manager can be improved, particularly in terms of integrations with other tools. I would like to see improvements in integrations with ID, Kerberos, or with other companies for...
What advice do you have for others considering Venafi?
Since using CyberArk Certificate Manager, I have seen specific outcomes such as a reduction in incidents because I can work with CyberArk Certificate Manager, where digital certificates are everywh...
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Also Known As

Venafi
No data available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Surescripts, CME Group, TD Bank Group, Aetna, MoneyGram, Zions Bancorp, Cisco
Barclays, US Department of Justice, National Bank of Kuwait, Turkish Aerospace, New York Albany School District, Regtransfers, University of Kent, Camden City School District, Oklahoma City Public Schools, Bank of Cyprus, Detran-PE: Pernambuco State Traffic Department
Find out what your peers are saying about CyberArk Certificate Manager vs. UserLock and other solutions. Updated: March 2026.
885,311 professionals have used our research since 2012.